The Mother of Cats and I have been knitting like crazy on her Mixology shawl.
The Mother of Cats says that it is spring today. Spring! The birds are coming back! Yellow Boy and I really like birds. Squirrels, not so much. Birds are awesome, though. And bugs. And snakes. We really like to chase snakes!!
Today the Mother of Cats did more cleaning and I got involved in the spring cleaning too; bath time for Yellow Boy.I helped the Mother of Cats put some cute little lights on her baby rose bush that she bought last month. The wire with the lights is perfect for chasing! She has to put the rose on the kitchen window ledge so Yellow Boy won’t eat it. He’s that way.Oh yeah. We knitted. I guess I should show you how far we have gotten on her Mixology Shawl. It is really getting to be a great size for a cat blanket… She can’t wait to get this done so she can wear it with her new denim hooded jacket. I can’t wait for her to finish so I can use it as a CAT BLANKET!!
I tried to get the Mother of Cats to let me outside to look for birds this afternoon, but she refused to do it. Something about snow on the ground and too much wind. What a silly Mother of Cats! Doesn’t she understand that it is now spring?
I’m just trying to take care of Yellow Boy… he hasn’t been able to hunt for bugs for sooo long.
See what a good boy I am.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The project notes for the Mixology are here. If you don’t know this pattern, it is the Mixology Shawl from Casapinka.
Sunday night I drove home from a visit with my son through a thunder snow storm. If you don’t know about these things, they are pretty exciting. Lightening, thunder, and downpours of snow. So much snow. We had over 6 inches of the heavy slushy stuff before it was over. The cats were in the closet sheltering in place when I got home. Poor things.
The next door neighbors have a dog that has become a ferocious barker over the winter. She even ate a hole in the fence so she can keep a better eye on my yard. Poor cats. It’s going to be a difficult return to the great outdoors when the warm weather arrives.
The snakes are little garter snakes; mostly harmless, but surprisingly fast when a cat is hunting them.
My big brother MacKenzie has been a little under the weather this week, so I’ve been taking up the slack by being especially helpful to the Mother of Cats all week. While MacKenzie has been sleeping upstairs I’ve been helping her with all of her chores. I get lots of snacks and pets, too, since MacKenzie isn’t there to barge in…
Here I’m helping the Mother of Cats with the laundry. I flattened every single stack of clean clothes for her. So much work. Why she doesn’t completely understand that my help is essential for optimal folding?
Now that it is the end of winter I’m moving into prime shedding season. I love to sleep in the sunlight, and then as I run upstairs to check on MacKenzie the fluffs of fur just fly off everywhere. It’s almost like indoor snow! So cool! The Mother of Cats keeps brushing me, but thankfully she isn’t getting enough fur off to spoil my fun.
Look at all of this fur! Thank heavens it is finally getting warm enough for me to get rid of all of this extra fluff.
Anyway, since the weather has been warm this week we worked on finishing some little projects.
Remember these socks? I slept on her legs for two whole days while she got the other sock done. Here they are! The Mother of Cats has enough yarn left over to make me a toy mouse. It’s only fair since MacKenzie got a whole blanket earlier this winter.The Mother of Cats also whipped up a pair of arm warmers.
The Mother of Cats is so strange. I’m too hot and dumping off all of my long fur, but she keeps putting these things onto her arms and feet. Doesn’t she understand that winter is ending? She should come take a nap with me in the sunlight by the back door. Silly Mother of Cats!
She has also been knitting on her Mixology.
That Mixology is so long now it covers me while she is knitting, so I really don’t like it all that much. I had to go upstairs to hang out with MacKenzie since she was so annoying while working on it. Every time she turns the knitting over it flaps over my head. She kept whapping me with the needles, too. No self respecting cat would put up with all of that. I decided that MacKenzie could use some attention, anyway, so I sleep with him when she’s knitting Mixology.
Today she took out that dreadful instrument of cat torture known as the VACUUM and chased us all over the house with it. It was just awful! Every time she turned it off to empty it I thought we were done, but no, she just reconnected everything and vacuumed another room. MacKenzie likes to follow her around to keep his eye on what she’s doing, but I hid. Best to be safe! When she came downstairs she caught me and carried me up the stairs past the scary machine and I just couldn’t help myself: I squeaked in terror! Can you blame me? The last time she carried me somewhere it was for a bath… MacKenzie laughed at me for an hour after that.
Here I am, fully recovered. Whew! What a long day it was.
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The socks are knit from a sock blank I bought at the Estes Park Wool Mart from Bonkers. The sock pattern is Eugene by Rachel Coopey. My project notes are here.
The arm warmers are the pattern that I worked out a few months ago when the cold weather started. I didn’t put in a thumb hole this time and the warmers just bunch up around my lower arms and wrists: just what I wanted this time. Here are the project notes.
MacKenzie had a cold for a few days: sneezing, cranky, and sleeping. Can cats have allergies? He’s back up to full speed again today and once again is the dominant cat; Yellow Boy has resumed his role of the little cat brother that MacKenzie alternately babies, grooms, and then roughs up. More yellow fur on the carpet…
Yellow Boy doesn’t know it, but he’s going to get a bath and clipping soon… Shedding season comes right before hair ball and matted fur season, and I hope to keep ahead of things this year.
The Mother of Cats has been working really hard on her sweater for the Ravellenics competition. I’ve been helping her all week. She is upset about all the cat hair in the sweater: totally ungrateful!!
It has been almost a whole week of knitting on the sweater. She is mostly cheerful, but there have been a few incidents where she got snappy about me chomping yarn and chasing the needles. It is so hard to support her when she gets like this, but Yellow Boy and I continue to contribute as much as we can. Really, we don’t need all of our fur; happy to share.
The sweater is now so big that is covers me while I’m sitting in her lap.See what I’m talking about?
Last night towards the end of the ice skating event she spread out the sweater to admire her work and started making sad noises. Really sad noises. Yellow Boy came running to see what was wrong and if she was giving away food.
What has happened here?
She took the sweater off the needles and did a lot of ripping. RIPPING! WOOHOO!!! I just love ripping! Lots of yarn flying. The ball got away from her and I chased it across the floor. The issue seemed to be about the pockets being on the BACK of the sweater instead of the front, but I have to tell you it was major cat party time. Yay! We cats even chased each other around the house afterwards and Yellow Boy’s fur was just flying everywhere!
Once the party was over I helped her pick up her stitches again. Ugh. BORING… I closely supervised so she wouldn’t make any more mistakes.
Finally she got all the stitches back into order, moved her markers and got ready to start knitting again. This time the pockets will be on the front of the sweater where they belong.
But instead of doing that she packed it all up, got an ice cream bar and went to bed. Seriously? Hello… I think we should get back to work here!
Nope. She stayed in bed. The sweater is still packed up but she plans to get back to work tonight when the Olympics start. Downhill racing. Ice Skating. Skeleton. We will knit then.
Right now I need some cookies!!
I’m such a good boy.
>^..^<
Note from the Mother of Cats: The sweater is Cushman by Isabell Kraemer. My Ravelry notes are here.
As you can see, I’m catching a little nap on the Mother of Cats’ Find Your Fade shawl. So nice. So squishy. Nothing quite like wool for a nap blanket.
For some reason the Mother of Cats gets upset when I sleep on her shawl. She keeps putting it on to wear and then she gets crabby when I try climb in and sleep on it on her lap. No matter how much I knead and purr she gets snippy about “snags” and pushes me off. She is so difficult sometimes. Really, she needs to learn to share her things a little better. Yellow Boy and I try to share when we’re sleeping on the shawl, after all.
Look at these yarns that she got out to make me my own blanket!!
Last week she went digging though her yarn stash (Woohoo! I got to go exploring in the stash while she worked!) and found these leftovers from socks and shawls to make me a blanket.
She used a really simple pattern just like the one that makes the wash clothes for the kitchen.She changed the colors every time she started to get bored, and did some fading of the colors while she worked. Not as nice as the Find Your Fade shawl, but still not bad.Last Friday she finally got my blankie all done for me. This is mine, mine, mine. All mine!! Forget what I said about sharing with Yellow Boy!Maybe the Mother of Cats isn’t that bad after all. Now I can sleep right next to her while she is wearing her shawl in bed knitting.
I’m such a good boy.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The cats have developed such an attachment to my Find Your Fade shawl (Okay, it is half silk/alpaca…) that they jump on it at every opportunity and even have taken to circling like sharks while I’m wearing it trying to find a loose end to sleep on. This is one big shawl, so there are ends for them to take advantage of.
I’ve been keeping their claws trimmed but they still managed to snag the shawl. Bad cats!! Well, not all that bad. They just need their own wool yumminess to sleep on. I wanted something simple that I could wash regularly.
The pattern I used was Grandmother’s Favorite Dishcloth on Ravelry. I knitted using yarn bits (including the silk/alpaca leftovers) and size 4 needles. The final blanket is MacKenzie sized.
I still need to make a blankie for Yellow Boy. For him I’ll double up the yarn and knit on size 6 needles; I have lots of projects calling my name, so he gets a marled blanket.
I know that it has been a long time. I hope that you haven’t been missing me.
The Mother of Cats has been a severe disappointment for just weeks and weeks. She caught some kind of cold early in December, carried on like a baby for over a week (nasal spray, salt water gargling, boxes of tissues… Yellow Boy and I became quite concerned about her mental health…) and COMPLETELY ignored our needs. As if that wasn’t enough, when she finally got over the virus, she then became even worse. She slept for hours and hours, stayed in her bed even when she was awake, and totally failed to deliver our cookies on time. SHE DIDN’T EVEN DO CHRISTMAS!!! which is totally our favorite time of the year. Hello… Christmas trees = world’s best cat toys. How could she have failed us this way?
She said she was in a flare. Whatever.
When she was awake she worked endlessly on these socks for her cousin’s Christmas present.
The yarn for the socks was from this sock blank that she bought at a yarn festival. She made it into a ball and wouldn’t let me help even a little bit.She wanted to make these complicated socks for her cousin. This cousin is special… they were born two days apart and are kind of like displaced twins. This cousin once gave her a whole quilt for a present. The least she could do was to make these socks! She started knitting the first week of December. Lots of time. I looked forward to days of great knitting together.But she was too tired to knit very long on them at a time, and can I be frank, she was pretty stupid with brain fog. Lots of mistakes. Lots of stress. She kept chasing me away while I was helping. She tried to knit in bed, which is MY place. So I ate the yarn a couple of time. If she gave me cookies in a timely manner these things wouldn’t happen.Her lack of energy and general stupidness was really obvious when she knitted the heels. It took her THREE HOURS to pick up those stitches to knit the afterthought heel. She started sighing and pushing me off the bed. She began to refer to the knitting project as the Turkish socks from hell. The Mother of Cats was really in trouble.I just kept on encouraging her. I purred a lot. I settled for fewer cookies. I even stopped eating the yarn. She was really in pitiful shape.By Christmas Day she had finished this much. Her cousin reminded her that Christmas continues until January 6th.Finally, finally they were done!Those horrid and ill behaved heels look pretty good, don’t they?
The Turkish Hell socks were packed up last week and mailed out. On Saturday, the last day of Christmas they arrived safely in their new home. They had better behave themselves and last for years and years; I would hate to travel all the way across the state to whack them into shape!
I’m such a good boy.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
These socks, called Classic Kilim, are from the book Around the World in Knitted Socks by Stephanie van der Linden. The socks were supposed to have tassels and embroidery; that so did not happen!!Here is the info on Ravelry with more info about the book. My notes on Ravelry are here.
On December 1st I got my pneumonia vaccine even though I had been struggling a little that week. That night my youngest son became ill with complications of diabetes and was rushed to the ER . I spent the next 2 days/nights at the ICU with him. Yep. About the time my son returned to work and I moved back home I was sick; my autoimmune diseases flared while I was fighting through the viral illness. My Sjogren’s symptoms have been off the chart and crushing fatigue and brain fog appeared along with them. This week I am better and have been knitting up a storm and planning blog posts. Hopefully I’ll be online again in a couple of more days.
I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats for the entire week getting these socks done. It is a lot of hard work; the kinky yarn from the sock blanks is really hard to get a good chomp on! I’m sure she doesn’t appreciate all that I do. In this shot I was warming up her needles and the sock blank by napping on top of it. Isn’t that nice of me?! Why does she get so snippy with me?
These are the socks that she ripped out a few weeks ago and restarted using fluffy white yarn with rabbit fur in it. Wow. This stuff is really yummy! For some reason she is keeping it closed up in a plastic bag so I can’t play with it after I dragged it upstairs to play “roll the ball” under the dining table. Whatever. She is just horrible about sharing her toys!
Here are the finished socks!! Aren’t they totally cool? Much nicer looking than the other attempt with the ugly brown lace yarn. I think that the sparkles are especially catchy.
I really like these socks, and they are just perfect for napping on whenever she leaves they out. So nice and toasty to sleep on. Just the right size to kick and bite when I’m feeling a little frisky. I think that she should keep the in the kitty toy box with my catnip-stuffed squirrel.
I’m such a good boy. She really should give me these socks.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
These socks are make with handpainted sock blanks by Greenwood Fiberworks. The minute I saw the blanks at a trunk show this fall I knew they had to be these socks. Even the name of the colorway was cool: Paper Roses. The sock pattern is Dave by Rachel Coopey, which is basically a nice vanilla sock. I made the version with afterthought heels to maintain the color sequence down the sock. The fluffy white yarn for the lace cuff is Knit Picks Bare Hare.
Check out this heel! This is really nice fitting on my foot and feels great. I’d never done a heel like this, but I’m glad that I tried it.
I’m really happy with the cuff at the top. I made good notes of what I did and recorded them into the Ravelry project page, but I also got some nice pictures and am thinking of blogging the pattern later in the week.
I know, I know. You have been wondering whatever happened to me. I have been knitting and knitting on the Marled Magic Sweater (by Stephen West), and it just seemed that it would be boring to put up even more pictures of my cat MacKenzie sleeping on ANOTHER chunk of knitted fabric (even if it was mohair fabulousness…).
But this cat isn’t MacKenzie, and besides, he is awake. This is my extremely elusive cat BobMorgan, who I call Yellow Boy in MacKenzie’s posts because, well, he is somewhat lacking in courage. My DIL only knows what he looks like because I sent her a picture. He wails if anything strange (like my sister and I replacing a window screen) happens. He is afraid of the camera, so a shot like this is rare. He is also the source of most of the cat hair in the pictures that I take.
I eventually stopped posting to the blog and just kept on knitting. And knitting. Then I finished the knitting and I was so exhausted by the whole experience that I didn’t get the ends woven in for another week.
I think what did me in was the i-cord bind off, which seemed to go on forever. It did make a really nice finished edge, however, so it was worth the time.
Thursday I took the sweater back out and finished it. It is done. It is beautiful. It is very, very warm. Did I mention that the temperature is in the 80’s outside? I sadly packed the Magic away to wait for colder days and some snow.
Don’t you want to see it?
Blocking was an issue. I didn’t want to stretch the sweater, which would make it longer, so I finally just laid it out on a towel, misted it with a spray bottle, and patted it into shape.Here it is! This sweater is lofty because of all the mohair I used, and is the perfect sweater to wrap up in for cold weather knitting and outings. Oh, did you notice the loose ends? They are all woven in and behaving themselves now.Check out the brioche on the arm (wine colored) the other stitches in this masterpiece were seed stitch, garter, and a simple lace.The black and grey panels in the back happened to be the yarns with cashmere in them too. Oh, my goodness. Wearing this baby feels wonderful!
Not the best pictures, but pretty good for selfies, don’t you think?
I used so many yarns to make this I finally just listed them the best I could in the notes part of my Ravelry entry. If you are interested, here is the link to my project page.
I just checked the weather report… it is going to snow next Thursday! I know what I’ll be wearing while I’m knitting that day!
The Mother of Cats and I haven’t really been neglecting all of you. We’ve been very, very busy working on her Marled Magic Sweater. This thing is huge! And very squishy.
See what I mean: squishy!
Every part of this HUGE sweater has mohair stranded with it. The Mother of Cats says that is what makes it “marled”. Whatever. I’m just glad that she is paying attention to my needs.
The best part of the sweater is a section that the Mother of Cats called “brioche” stitch.
The brioche stitch section has cashmere and mohair mixed in the yarn. So nice with my fur. I totally could get into a blanket for my cat bed made out of this stuff…
See. Here’s a close-up. Doesn’t that look like it would make a great cat bed blanket?
The Mother of Cats has been working steadily on this project, and we are making really good progress. This afternoon she finished the 6th section of the sweater and took it out for a picture or two. She did not let me go outside with her because I jumped the fence again last week (Hey, there was an ENEMY CAT in my yard again!!) and I’m currently under house arrest. The Mother of Cats is so unstable… why does she overreact like this?
Look at this! This is the right side of the sweater (front and back) and the part with the vee shape is the center front. Wouldn’t you like to see what those stripes look like?Here they are. The Mother of Cats used 2 yarns for each color in the stripes, so I had a total of 4 different yarns to chomp on while she was knitting. I had SO much fun! I wonder why the Mother of Cats get so snippy with me?
So that’s all that is going on here. The Mother of Cats and I have been knitting and knitting and knitting while she binge watches Netflix and I help her keep all of her little yarns organized. The sweater is already big enough to be a really nice blanket, but she says there is still a lot of knitting ahead of us. I’ve been such a good boy and so much help she brought me home a present yesterday!
Her best friend and knitting buddy Deb made this little friend for me!
It’s a little knitted cat that looks just like me! The Mother of Cats says it is for her birthday, but I know that it was really for me. This afternoon it slept with me in my cat bed. So nice and cuddly! I think that the next one should be stuffed with catnip.
Well, that’s it. The Mother of Cats found some nice purple yarn and a grey mohair to use in the next section of the sweater. She is champing at the bit and can’t wait to start knitting the next section.
Back to the knitting salt mines!
I’m such a good boy.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
I actually made an Excel spreadsheet to figure out the colors that I’m using as I make the sweater as I wanted to balance things out and needed to plan ahead. I’m not out of control at all!
I’m struggling with the Ravelry project page: so many yarns to record! I finally started listing the yarns for each section in the notes section, and I need to update the list of yarns that I’m using. I plan to do that when I finally get done.
It is clear that this sweater will be large; I can’t wait to be folded in its cushy yumminess this winter.
My friend Deb is developing the patterns for the floppies that she creates for her daughter and others. She has made a bunny, panda, and now my cat. I’ll alert you all as soon as her patterns go up on Ravelry.
Isn’t this the cutest? He sits up really well and is the most perfect floppy cat ever!!
I am so upset and angry. How could all of this happen to ME!? I’m a good boy!
I have never been so disrespected before. My day has been simply outrageous. Awful. Horrible. Beyond belief. The Mother of Cats needs to take action!
This is Cosmos. He lives next door. Doesn’t he look sweet? NOT!!
Cosmos is the cat next door. He sneaks over to MY yard and TAUNTS ME through the back garden window. Yellow Boy uses some simply shocking language while Cosmos is at the window, but I prefer to be direct. I will eat you, Cosmos! I will stick my claws into your tail so hard you will wish it could fall off…
I mean, if you are a cat with superior intellect, why not show off with some creative threats?
So, when Cosmos appeared on MY back fence this week I jumped right up there to give him a piece of my mind. The Mother of Cats trained me years ago to not jump the fence, but this was an extreme emergency. Cosmos ran like the wind to get away from me and I chased him right down the fence and out of my yard.
Like seriously, I was on the fence of the next yard over. I’d never been this far out of the yard because the Mother of Cats never lets me go anywhere interesting. Well, what should a curious cat do? I jumped down.
I ended up on this patch of wet dirt behind a storage shed……and who knew that there was a dog on a leash in this yard? Yikes! I was trapped.
I couldn’t jump the fence to go home, and I couldn’t get past the dog to leave the yard. Cosmos headed into his house for a nap and I was stuck hanging out behind the storage shed for OVER AN HOUR waiting for the Mother of Cats to notice that I needed help. How could she neglect my needs this way?
Finally the Mother of Cats arrived. The dog was put away, and she GRABBED me by the scruff of the neck, put me onto the fence, and then WHACKED me to force me to jump back into my yard. OK, I may have been snarling just a little bit while she was doing this. I was upset!!
I was so upset this happened once I got back indoors……and then she wouldn’t let me go out for most of the afternoon. She told me that I was in the DOG HOUSE which I think was particularly mean spirited of her.When she finally let me out late in the afternoon this was parked in the street behind the house. NO!!! How many upsetting things can happen in one day?These scary men were putting the cable under the sidewalk behind the house. Yellow Boy was so scared he wouldn’t even come out of the garage. How could this be happening? Why am I having such a horrible day?
The Mother of Cats tells me that I can only go out into the yard in the mornings from now on because she needs to be there with me. What? Doesn’t she think I can take care of myself? What disrespect! I can’t believe that she is acting this way. I’m not sure that she really loves me any more.
But she always gives me cookies when we come in from outside.
And the best places to sleep ARE in the house.
Cosmos hasn’t come back all week, so maybe I don’t need to be out there after all. Besides, there are thunderstorms every afternoon with rain, thunder and hail. Thunder is scary!
Maybe the Mother of Cats loves me after all.
I’m such a good boy.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats: The city where I live (Aurora, Colorado) has a leash law for cats; they are not allowed to run free. When I first rescued MacKenzie I installed a cat containment system from Invisible Fence and trained MacKenzie to not jump out of the back yard. He learned very quickly and hasn’t jumped for years. He has been known to jump the fence during a cat fight, but once that is over his training kicks in and he won’t jump to came back home, and is afraid of the fence when I try to put him back over it. He loves being outdoors, so from now on I’ll stay with him to supervise whenever he is outside.
Yellow Boy has never jumped the fence, and I didn’t have to train him. He is a cat with limited courage…
It has rained here for days, and the dog next door is a clever boy; he hangs out on the trampoline to stay dry. I’m waiting for him to learn tricks.
Yarn, Books & Roses 